Andreessen: Google's (GOOG) Chrome Browser Actually Matters

That didn't take long: Marc Andreessen -- Netscape co-founder, board member of eBay (EBAY) and Facebook, and angel investor to numerous start-ups -- already broke his May pledge to stop talking to the press. Specifically, he sat down with Portfolio mag.

Marc doesn't pull any punches (does he ever?). Here are a few choice tidbits:

Marc -- who knows a thing or two about browsers -- calls Google's (GOOG) Chrome "very meaningful." Never mind Chrome has a tiny market share and falling. He thinks Chrome delivers better performance than either Firefox or IE, so much so it will drive the next wave of cloud-based browser apps. Both Mozilla and Microsoft (MSFT) will have to up their game to stay competitive.

The New York Times should abandon print altogether. (The Christian Science Monitor just did exactly that.) "You’ve got to do what Intel did in ’85 when it was getting killed by the Japanese in memory chips, which was its dominant business. And it famously killed the business—shut it off and focused on its much smaller business, microprocessors, because that was going to be the market of the future." Of course, Marc loves tweaking old media companies.